Dead and dying coral reefs in Gulf of Mexico blamed on April oil spill

News that large swaths of dying coral reefs have been found southwest of the wrecked oil rig responsible for the largest offshore spill in U.S. history should come as no surprise to anyone. Logic dictates that the effects of the colossal April 20 blowout and spill will be far-reaching and catastrophic, the protests of oil and fishing interests in the Gulf of Mexico notwithstanding. Scientists studying the spill's aftermath said the damage to the reefs was almost certainly due to exposure to toxic chemicals like oil, according to the New York Times. “I think that we have a smoking gun,” said Charles Fisher, a marine biologist from Pennsylvania State University heading a U.S. government-sponsored scientific mission to the Gulf. “The circumstantial evidence is very strong that it’s linked to the spill.” The damaged coral was found Tuesday by the government expedition, which launched a submersible robot to view the coral and obtain samples. Scientists expect to return to the Gulf floor in December using a Navy submersible that can carry three people to depths of 15,000 feet, the newspaper said. An estimated 5 million barrels of crude flowed into the Gulf for months after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in April, killing 11 workers.

Water on the moon changes a lot of assumptions

This week's realization that there probably is water on earth's moon raises a lot of questions -- not the least of which being, "what other things don't we know about space that we think we do know?" NASA scientists reached the startling conclusion about the presence of water after analyzing data from an instrument they supplied to to India's Chandrayaan-1 satellite, that country's first unmanned moon mission, according to the New York Times. The device detected the widespread presence of hydroxyl, a molecule composed of one atom of hydrogen and one atom of water, on a celestial body long considered completely dry. The discovery was published this week on the Web site of the journal Science. What may be even more surprising is that the finding actually replicates earlier findings of the Apollo missions, which brought back lunar soil containing evidence of water decades ago but were attributed to contamination from the moist earth atmosphere, the Times said. The data also confirms findings from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which passed the moon 10 years ago on its way to Saturn, and the Deep Impact spacecraft sent to study the comet Tempel 1, the Times said. “It’s so startling because it’s so pervasive,” Lawrence A. Taylor of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, told the Times. "It's like somebody painted the globe." Taylor co-wrote a paper analyzing the Chandrayaan-1 data. NASA scientists now are examining the possibility that the moon's hydroxyl could be used to supply water and even oxygen for future manned missions to the moon, or for a permanent installation there, the Times said. But that's just like humans to see this new discovery in terms of human beings. Maybe it means that there is or was another type of life on the moon or on other planets in our solar system, life that we don't even begin to understand or know how to recognize. And maybe, just maybe, it means that a lot of our other assumptions about earth and space are incorrect.